


Don’t do me any favors

by Nevospitanniy



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Low Chaos, M/M, flesh and steel, no betas no spellcheck no gods no masters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-03-02 13:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13319328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevospitanniy/pseuds/Nevospitanniy
Summary: Cause every friendly gestureTurns my stomach inside outDon't do me any favorsI am better off without





	Don’t do me any favors

**Author's Note:**

> Seems Bad lads
> 
> Tangentially inspired by Breath into your well by imperfectkreis, which is infinitely more focused and also has porn. Do recommend. 
> 
> Thanks to A-Ha for the title and summary.

“No. I never needed your help and I don’t need it now.”

“Another surprise. So be it.”

The Outsider’s pale form whooshes away in a rush of black twisted wind, and Corvo feels His judgement like a backhand.

//

Emily would approve of his choice, Corvo thinks, pressing a towel to his wet face. A small mirror over the sink wordlessly nags him to shave - with Jessamine’s voice, as always - but he can’t be bothered or trusted with the blade right now. 

He still wraps up his palm, mostly out of habit, even if it does also improve grip in his non-dominant hand, or that’s what he told the curious Overseers. They tried so hard to be subtle about their snooping, dropping things at Corvo’s left side to pick them up and sneak a look at his hand between the layers of fabric, but failed time after time. It would’ve been funny if their potential success didn’t carry a death sentence. 

Emily would understand. He’s sure of it, he _has_ to be sure, because rejecting the Mark is ridiculously hard, as it turns out, so Corvo needs the reassurance he made the right choice. Suffering for no cause is just suffering, there is nothing noble in being prideful if it comes with a body count. The Outsider just stood there and waited, to put the Mark back where it belonged, where Corvo has gotten used to seeing it every day for the last decade and a half. He stared so intently, Corvo could almost see Him snapping His fingers in impatience. As if there was no other possible answer, and truly, who in their right mind would refuse? Corvo winces at the thought.

He felt the magic abandon his body like a sinking ship, violently ripped out into Delilah's grasp, as she rended every ounce of Void from flesh and bone. It wrung Corvo dry and left him for dead, and it was the worst thing he’d ever felt. 

He said no.

Not that he expected the Outsider to beg or anything.

He’s not old yet, he can take on a couple of rooftops and sewers still, and bonecharms do help, even if less so than before. He will figure this Delilah woman out and set Emily free and everything will go back to the way it was. Well, most of it. Corvo flexes his left hand, growing hot under the wrap from Serkonan stifling heat. Funny tan lines aren’t an issue in a smog-filled Gristol, but Karnacan sun just might saddle him with an extra present this time.

Humidity wreaks havoc on his bones.

Emily would do the same. He can hear Meagan’s voice from down the hall, reading to herself or talking to Anton, who is he to judge? Imaginary friends are his area of expertise. He may not know much about the sea, but it gets lonely.

At the very least, the Abbey has nothing on him now.

//

The first shrine Corvo encounters gives him pause. It doesn’t look that different from Dunwall ones, draped in purple fabrics he’s never seen for sale anywhere, but swimming in the warm candlelight instead of a nocturnal whale oil haze. It’s well looked after, loved. The Outsider's painted face, close enough in appearance to be recognizable, black eyes notwithstanding, stares him down from its frame, too close for comfort. Sokolov sure knew what he was doing.

Two runes are laid out in an offering, but Corvo can’t feel them speaking anymore, no power surging through his veins when his fingers reach the bone. The moment they do, however, the room shatters into a billion jagged pieces and he tumbles head first into the Void. Corvo lands in a heap, miraculously not breaking his legs upon contact. It’s just as cold as he remembers.

Calmly observing his graceless arrival, the Outsider just blinks and speaks His piece as if 15 years are a blink of an eye and things haven't changed. To be fair, for Him they probably haven’t.

The Outsider doesn’t usually throw barbs, but Corvo expects a comment all the same, a barely-there off-hand remark about what an ingrate he is, how he wasted an opportunity not many in any given generation get. His expectations aren’t met; the Outsider walks around this corner of the Void, hands still clasped politely behind His back, probably giving Corvo a riddle to solve or some secret to know about his mission, his grand plan. Save the Empress, save the world.

Corvo can’t for the life of him concentrate on anything He says. His usual brand of soliloquizing sounds even more absurd without having the Mark, and Corvo doesn’t deal with absurd well anymore.

“Why am I here?”

His voice is a bit hoarse from Karnacan dust and it stops the Outsider in His tracks, mid-step. It’s like He forgot Corvo speaks or just didn’t expect him to interrupt.

“I invited you. Make no mistake, Corvo,” His face is downturned, “you did not want my gifts and that was your decision to make, but you are still Marked. You will never _not_ be.”

That sounds unmistakably like a threat, only Corvo isn’t sure how it measures up to the regular prophecies of maiming and death he hears as a Spymaster. He's never been threatened with something _not_ to happen before, but his daughter is cast in stone, so, there's a first time for everything.

“Forever?”

The Outsider turns away without an answer to watch the whale floating in the distance, and Corvo can’t breathe. He can’t say he's shocked; after all, the Outsider doesn't seem to be the kind to share His toys, even if those toys are people. Especially then.

Wind them up and see them go.

A chirr of wind licks at his back. "No one's ever done what Delilah did."

Corvo sharply whips around, now standing face to face with the Outsider. He looks pensive, confused, and His black eyes are moving fast in the sockets, but for the lack of pupils they seem to tremble.

"No one has ever stolen a Mark before."

Corvo unwittingly flexes his left hand posessively and swallows. There is no possible way for him to understand how this world works and he can't even start to fathom the things that unsettle gods, everything his imagination provides is hopelessly lacking in grandeur. So many things he wants to ask, but his tongue seems to have shriveled up and died inside his mouth.

"Find her."

‘Or else’ goes unsaid, but not unheard.

//

"’The Crown Killer’ is a misleading name, is it not? Alexandria Hypatia has yet to take a single royal life and now, thanks to you, she never will."

Maybe He thinks He helps, that's why these visits keep happening, out of some vaguely human misguided attempt at empathy. What reason does the Outsider have keep Corvo’s company when he so flagrantly keeps achieving his goals without arcane powers? Isn't it insulting?

"Not at all." The Outsider warps to Corvo's other side. "You were talking out loud,” He adds, pleased with Himself.

"At least you're not reading my mind, that's reassuring." Corvo can't shake the feeling of wrongness, like the Void itself opposes to him being here, but the Outsider makes it play host. Play nice. Air is too thick and too thin at the same time, goes down his throat like a slice of stale bread, without filling his lungs. 

"There is no need. You haven't ceased to be interesting, with or without my Mark - it is only a means to an end."

Corvo frowns, knowing He doesn't extend this courtesy to others. His entire body viscerally feels the Outsider’s presence; He is beautiful and terrifying, like the eye of the storm. A veneer of calm, holding back a catastrophe. An impending doom with a man's face. Corvo wants to think Him human so bad, but each try is flimsier than the previous one and he can feel madness breathing down his neck.

"I will take it as a compliment."

"As you should. Go back to the Dreadful Wale and ask about what made Alex so grim."

//

_“Kill me... please, kill me...”_

Jindosh softly weeps in the chair as Corvo flees his home in stunned terror, hurried footsteps rattling the planks of the floating corridor. Some fates are truly worse than death. Lydia Boyle still occasionally visits Corvo in his dreams and he can foresee The Grand Inventor joining her very soon. He wonders if they would like each other; probably not. 

He runs past the disassembled clockwork soldiers, almost breaking his neck after slipping on a gear. Shoulder first, Corvo pushes the double doors to the mansion open and falls out onto the marble steps. He retches with an empty stomach, body spasming in a perverse dance, a thin string of bile-tasting spit hanging from his mouth. Warm salty wind caresses his heated face, adding soft notes to the sound of his choked breathing. His pockets are full of runes and bonecharms, because the Heart is still eager to please, and he swears he feels a hand on his shoulder.

Corvo stands, tall and solemn, before the shrine and tries to forget a man losing his mind, lest he loses his own.

"You undid Kirin Jindosh, the prodigy of Karnaca. Along with Anton Sokolov, you now have two geniuses of your time under your belt. Impressive," The Outsider stops of short of curtseying in mocking deference and this whole spectacle tastes like rot.

"I thought you liked when I don't kill people." The skiff is waiting for him; he was tempted to miss the altar all together, but somehow felt this conversation needed to happen.

"But is he really alive?" The Outsider shrugs and Corvo gets nauseous again. "Your ability for destruction is uncanny, yet you keep it restrained, a butterfly pinned to a board. You never _choose_ violence despite how easy it comes to you, but also never hesitate to resort to it."

Last night, Corvo drew a Mark on himself. It was a poor facsimile of the real thing, because his painting skills begin and end at simple schematics and arrows to point, but it felt ridiculously good to see the damn thing again. The ink felt so alive under the tip of his pen, feathering out into tiny lines of his skin, so cooperative. He misses it so much, longs for it, yearns skin deep, and all the reasons why just strengthen his resolve on pure principle.

He washed it off at the sink and rubbed the back of his palm red raw to hide the evidence.

"What I did was plenty violent," Corvo points out, unwrapping his hand. It’s time to retire the fabric that faithfully hid his heresy the last several years. He feels naked without it, in more senses than one. The Outsider plucks the strip from Corvo's palm before he can stuff it inside his jacket.

"Survival of Kirin Jindosh is largely irrelevant to the story of Karnaca, but not to yours. I'll hold onto this for you."

The Outsider vanishes and the Void is relieved to be rid of Corvo. He's two runes richer, but one worn hand wrap short.

//

Corvo sees poetic justice in not visiting a shrine after confronting an actual witch. Up yours. He doesn’t need His powers, he doesn’t need His advice and he doesn’t need Him.

//

He wakes up in the Void.

Figures. Avoidance is an exercise in futility.

Corvo’s cabin lacks a far wall. Throwing the covers and getting out of bed, he steps off the wooden floors and trudges along the worn stone, like thousands of feet over hundreds of years have walked here before him. They might have. The Outsider, in His unchanging pomp, is already sitting at the small table that looks incredibly out of place at the barren rock outcrop, a chessboard in front of Him, pupil-less eyes peering at the newcomer, as if he wasn’t the one to bring him here. He’s playing black.

“I’m not good at this,” Corvo confesses, settling heavily into a tiny metal bistro chair. He is definitely not; multiple people over the years have tried to teach him, starting with Euhorn Kaldwin himself and ending with the entirety of The Loyalists. Before they betrayed him, of course. Old Samuel seemed to have the best luck, maybe all the years at sea had gifted him inhuman patience.

“Your chess mastery doesn’t matter to someone who can see all of your moves ahead. Which ones you choose, that’s what makes it interesting.”

Corvo can definitely understand this and it’s a relief; he had been afraid the Outsider stopped making any sense at all. He moves his pawn two grids ahead.  
  
“I will not ask why you didn’t visit. After all, you don’t need me,” He says softly, making Corvo wiggle uncomfortably in his seat, “however, I do implore you to hear what I have to say about Delilah.”

The Outsider curves his knight into a defensive position.

“She is unprecedented. A very small number of people would dare to challenge the Void, even fewer would know how. None of my Marked has ever betrayed me like this, stolen the Mark from another chosen.”

Corvo sacrifices his pawn to get another one across from the knight. It’s a fairly useless move, a standard one for beginners, which he is, by all accounts, but the Outsider ignores his novice ineptitude, toying with the round top of Corvo’s taken piece.

“Didn’t she die once already?”

Dropping the pawn down onto the stone floor, the Outsider follows its path as it rolls off the edge and vanishes only to fall from nowhere right into His palm.

“She cheated death, she cheated you,” He gently puts the piece on the table, “she cheated me. Tell me, how do you think your Mark worked?”

“Magic,” Corvo says with all the conviction he can muster. It’s the least nuanced answer and the only one he could give without making a complete fool of himself, but the Outsider seems placated and moves the pawn out of the way.

“It worked because I told it to. Your powers came from me.”

It’s kind of common knowledge that witches court the Outsider for their abilities, so this revelation was probably much less dramatic than He hoped for it to be. He’s missing something.

“I don’t follow, what’s the catch?” Corvo stopped paying attention to the board where the pieces move on their own. His bishop takes the Outsider’s knight, but loses to His rook.

The Outsider takes a long time to answer.

“No person should have this much power.” Every letter seems insurmountable, violently fought for. Whether it’s the substance of what’s being told or the sole fact He _has_ to tell, Corvo doesn’t know; he does know he’s being told a secret no one alive is privy to, and it feels special, important. “The Mark is a bridge: you siphon the power from the Void, from me, but it also ties me to my Marked. In stealing yours, Delilah doubled her bridges. She is a part of me now and I don’t like it.”

Bitterness and resentment drip from His words much like wax from a candle. Corvo wouldn’t think the Outsider had enough alive left in Him to feel anything. Meanwhile, His pawn reaches his side of the board and transforms into a queen; it turns patina green, snaking thin vines toward other figurines. 

“She will not part with her spoils willingly or easily.”

“Without a doubt.” Corvo grabs the queen in distaste and throws it over his shoulder. A breath later, it hits him square in the head, flung back from the abyss.

He barely manages to curse and cover his offended temple before the Outsider slaps His hand on the table, cripplingly loud and thunder-like, sending figurines flying. He looks somewhere above Corvo’s head, black eyes unmoving. This is a staring contest and Corvo suddenly knows that whatever He’s scowling at doesn’t have any eyes. Terror makes the hair on his nape stand on end.

What felt like hours later, the Outsider blinks and sits straighter, tipping His chin up.

“You’ve burned your bridge, Corvo. The Void... disapproves.” 

It doesn’t want him here, not anymore. It’s a weird thought; Corvo never considered the Void to be anything but the brine in which the Outsider spends his non existence, but it sure holds an opinion on him.

“You’re an interloper, yes, but you don’t have to be,” answering the unasked question, the Outsider leans forward, palms gripping the sides of the board; the remaining pieces fall down lifelessly and stop moving. Uncharacteristic eagerness wafts off Him in hot waves. “You can wield the Mark again and be Delilah’s equal.”

He doesn’t need it.

“I don’t need it.”

The Outsider smiles with all teeth.

“Need is just a want you can’t refuse. Take it back.”

Corvo stands up too fast, rumble upending a neat row of taken black pieces.

“No.”

The table, chess and the rock disappear in a third of a heartbeat, replaced by Delilah in the throne room, _their_ throne room, slowly circling Emily’s petrified figure. Humming, she moves her fingers like claws and green stems climb up his daughter’s outstretched arms. Flowers the color of the shrine bloom on them.

The Outsider is by the destroyed Jessamine memorial, her face torn from the painting’s canvas with the rose stuffed inside the hole.

Someone starts caterwauling in the hallway and Delilah whips her head around, looking right through Corvo. Her eyes focus and unfocus once, twice, thrice, and she storms off, passing the Outsider by a hair.

“I said I will not to be bothered!”

“What is this?” his ability to talk is not hindered, but words still stick in his throat. Plucking the flower from the portrait, the Outsider walks over and gently tucks it inside Corvo’s jacket. His face is jarringly hard in opposition to soft movements.

“Take it back.”

“No.”

Corvo finally blinks, and they are back in the Void. He feels its push; it can’t stand his presence. For once, they agree, he wants to leave. The Outsider grabs his hand, completely blank skin seeming to glow tauntingly in Void light.

“Take it back.”

“You've never needed my permission before.”

He squeezes and, for the first time since they met, Corvo is genuinely afraid of Him. The Outsider is losing human form, façade cracking under pressure.

“Now I do. Take it back, Corvo, take it back.”

There is something so horrifyingly sincere about His insistence, desperation distorting His face, like it forgot how to emote. Corvo wants to say yes, he can already feel his mouth moving.

“No.”

Letting go of his palm like it burned, the Outsider vanishes, eyes disappearing last. This was the wrong answer to give, because Corvo stays there alone with only the Void’s palpable hatred to keep him company. The rose in his jacket wilts and blackens, petals crumbling into dust.

He stares at the floating whale. It sings, like whales do.

//

Vera, in her resplendent youth, was beautiful. Corvo stares at her portrait, despite the potential danger of overstaying his welcome in Paolo’s chambers, and can’t get enough of her stony eyes and face – it’s hard to believe that the crazy dead Granny Rags, the one eating people, and her are the same woman. But then again, Sokolov has a tendency to make people look better than they do, or at least that’s what he thinks. Art was never his strong suit.

Corvo sighs and touches the runes on the altar.

Nothing happens.

The air stays the same, dusty and overly warm, he can hear the chatter of the gang outside and feel the cool carved bone underneath his fingertips. The wall in front of him is just as solid as it was the day this building went up and that terrifies Corvo for a brief second more than anything ever did in his entire life. 

The Outsider is supposedly above being petty, but Corvo leaves the place in a hurry, abandoning the shrine. The Heart beats in his jacket, offended at being ignored, but his own heart is faster.

//

"Put that thing away, will you?"

Stilton can see the Heart. Corvo squeezes it tighter from surprise, Jessamine agreeably gives a titbit about the house and her voice sounds twice as loud now that he knows someone else hears it. Before Corvo can start talking, the room goes grayscale and time comes to a screeching halt.

"Aren't you glad you refused my Mark now, given how it doesn't work inside these halls?"

Perching on a grand piano, the Outsider smiles and Corvo has a stupid vision of him holding a rose in His teeth. He fights the urge to literally shake it out of his head.

"I don't have strong feelings one way of the other," he mutters in his beard, hiding the Heart. Offending Stilton's sensibilities feels counterproductive to his mission of having a talk. The Outsider leans His head to the side, slipping down to stand on the floor.

"Don't lie to me, friend, it's indecorous." He doesn't look upset, but any emotion is an ancient half-forgotten twisted version on His face.

Once again, Corvo secretly regrets Daud's absence and not asking him more at their last encounter. He may be against murder most days, but he has certainly developed a taste for torture in Coldridge. Picked up some tricks, too.

“Delilah did plenty of miracles with the powers I’ve gifted her, but the one you will see may be her best one yet. Three years ago, a ritual took place in Aramis Stilton’s study, and you have an invitation. It’s past due, but I have something that lets you sneak a peek anyway.” The Outsider looks at Stilton with surprising pity. "His first life ended the moment Delilah's second began. An exchange, if you will. I'm sure she had found it very poetic."

"He hadn't."

That remark seems to amuse Him. “Well, you just might fix it.”

Corvo taps his fingers nervously on the hilt of his folded sword; being in His presence makes him jittery, anxious, a droning sense of foreboding stealing little bits of breath.

"Do you want to know what Emily is doing?"

The question comes out of nowhere. Gripping the sword, Corvo nods. This is a play, but he doesn't know what kind just yet. The Outsider walks past, sitting on the bench beside frozen Stilton.

"She is dreaming. Delilah's magic put her in a very deep sleep that she will not remember if she ever wakes. Right now, she sees her Mother reading a book in the garden, feeding pieces of bread to the hungry birds."

Maybe He expected to get a rise out of Corvo, to see him angry and ready for war, but all it did was calm him down. Emily is, well, fine – as fine as she could be, given the circumstances. Corvo wants to think Jessamine is watching over her and sending these pleasant dreams to pass the time till her father returns and sets her free.

“Thank you for telling me. What do you want?”

The Outsider blinks His bottomless eyes at Corvo.

“Running the risk of incurring your wrath again, I will have to ask you to accept the Mark.”

Stilton looks like a mannequin, eerily immobile. Rubbing his forehead, Corvo sighs.

“I don’t understand, why do you want me to have it so bad? Just stamp it on and let’s continue, I have a daughter to save.” For a moment he is worried this sounded like a tacit agreement, but the Outsider turns His head to the side in avoidance.

“I owe you no explanation.”

Corvo runs his tongue along his teeth; He is worse than Emily in childhood. This is increasingly frustrating.

“Just how I owe you no Mark, yet here we are.” He doesn’t give a single inch.

The Outsider jerks His head again, an aborted nervous gesture, tendons of His neck jutting out, His face twisting for a brief instance. There is a war there, pride tangled up in the frown of His brow, battling something Corvo doesn’t recognize.

“Please.”

The manor was already quiet, but it feels as if the sole concept of sound stopped from ever having been born with the ear-shattering silence. And Corvo heard everything.

The Outsider begged. The Outsider said ‘please’. A god, a man, a leviathan, He doesn’t beg anyone. He gives and He takes and you say ‘thank you’, that’s what you do. The whales sing, the Void spits in your face, you accept His gifts. That’s the order of things Corvo has disrupted by his selfish fearful refusal.

He feels powerful and important and the Mark is nothing compared to the magic he just performed.

The Outsider’s head jerks again, more violently this time, and Corvo abruptly thinks he has this whole thing pegged wrong.

“You’re in pain, aren’t you? Why-“

“Take it back, I need you to take it back, please,” He interrupts Corvo, spitting out words like they had to more place in His throat. The pretense is gone and He heaves with lungs that don’t actually work, clawing at His neck where a wire-thin ear-to-ear scar divided the white skin; Corvo is certain it wasn’t there before.  
  
“Corvo, it hurts, why does it hurt-“ His palms clumsily hug the scar, pressing in it with urgency, as if it’s supposed to reopen any second now and drown them all in divine blood. The Outsider almost looks younger, without His usual pall and cool; vulnerable, scared. Corvo stands, riveted to the filthy stone floor, watching a god crumble to pieces in front of him.

He saw a whale die once, its mournful gasps filling the entire slaughterhouse and carrying down the Wrenhaven, visiting people’s homes through the open windows at night like a lullaby, for days. Corvo can almost see the thin layer on the Outsider’s neck slide away and show a row of triangular black-stained teeth from the gash.

And then, just as suddenly as it started, everything stops. Hands falling to His knees, the Outsider’s face blanks out, mouth hanging slightly ajar, the red thread of the scar disappearing like a string of syrup drowning in a glass of milk. Sitting side to side with Stilton, fingers still on the piano keys, they mirror each other, both unnaturally unpleasantly still, surrounded by the shining dust.

Corvo reaches out, managing to swipe his digits across the Outsider’s cheekbone, when He disappears into a cloud of liquid smoke. The sound and color whoosh deafeningly back into the room, Stilton’s janky music filling it again.

“There are whales inside the mines...”

Beside him on the bench lies a small heart-shaped contraption, a tiny bonecharm revolving inside. With a flick of the wrist, iridescent slate lenses fold out and Corvo knows what he has to do.

//

The Outsider behaves as if nothing is out of the ordinary, ignoring Corvo’s questions he shouts over His monologue. If Corvo wasn’t scared shitless, he would be so very angry. He’s actually both.

The scar is still there on His neck when the Void hurriedly punts him to the Stilton’s now-unlocked front door.

//

Corvo breaks down in an abandoned apartment off Ravina Boulevard.

It had a window open just enough so he could fit through without damaging his clothes too badly; they are dirty and probably have blood on them, but he still has standards.

There is no furniture, but also, no bloodflies. His boots leave prints in the thick dust on the floorboards, sinking in it like down. Someone moved away a long time ago, even before the Rat Plague hit Dunwall, judging by the newspaper remnants on the windowsill. 17th Day, Month of High Cold, 1829. What was he doing then? Emily was two years old, probably chubby-cheeked and adorable, Jessamine cooing over her crib, glaring daggers at everyone who walked by too loudly. Corvo remembers all of this in a crashing, drowning wave of smell and sound, Jessamine's laugh, holding Emily's tiny foot in an equally tiny sock, that first true sun in the Month of Nets, kissing her fingertips, poked by roses in the Royal Garden. It's all too much too fast and he can't open his eyes.

Corvo sinks to his knees, joints voicing their displeasure at the hard wood under them, presses undoubtedly dirty palms to his face and weeps. Loudly, shamelessly, without the fear of being overheard, moisture seeping into his beard.

He is so close to finishing his task and yet it seems unsurmountable, now more than ever. Moment to moments he is testing his luck, sneaking past guards and Overseers, jumping roofs and balconies; he doesn't always reach his destination. Powers had made him lazy, complacent, comfortable. They felt good, they felt great, they made him forget.

Corvo wants nothing more than to have them back, but also despises the very idea of owing something to the Outsider once again. He is not a toy, he is not property. His gifts supposedly require nothing in return, but they do, and so far, Corvo has lost his woman and his daughter. You pay for them with blood and tears. The Outsider gave Daud the Mark and Corvo couldn’t even cut that bastard’s throat in retaliation.

"You didn't cut his throat because Daud was just a cog in the machine and you saw that."

The light behind Corvo's eyelids changes and he braves a peek. The Outsider's boots are looking him in the face; Corvo is somehow expecting a kick. They step closer without leaving prints.

"Feel free to lay the blame on me. Many have," that sounds so self-aware and biting he just has to look.

The Outsider is infuriatingly unchanged. Still the same hair, slicked to His forehead, still the same jacket, looking worn, despite not getting any actual wear, still the same boots without prints. Without evidence.

"Are you the machine?" Corvo's voice is heavy with tears, but he doesn't look away. He doesn’t dare. “I'm not angry with you, if it ever mattered. How could I? You don't understand what you are doing to us."

He gets up from the floor, wiping at his knees, unclips the mask and puts it back on. The Outsider watches this with unabashed interest, seemingly indifferent to Corvo's words. The scar is nowhere to be found.

The mask helps, but in reality Corvo just couldn't have Him stare anymore.

"I was alive once and understand people well enough, they are so very predictable, especially in large groups. It's you I can't solve." The lilt of His voice borders on dangerous in its sweetness. Corvo abruptly remembers Jindosh and sets upon sets of forceps and scalpels in his lab. The Outsider goes on: "A minute ago you craved your magic back and now you refuse once again, without words? How peculiar."

The door to the apartment is bricked over, so Corvo takes the window again. The Outsider will find His own way out.

"Take it back." His voice is quiet, like He thought Corvo would not hear. 'No' is dancing in his mouth, because what fun is it to deny Him time and again, but somehow Corvo does not feel cruel this evening. He jumps out into the stifling dusk and takes the scaffolding up.

//

Corvo Attano is tired. The soft swoosh of water outside his room should put him to sleep, but all it does is make Corvo think monstrous thoughts, of drowning and Pandyssian depths and dead sailors clutched in the sea's grasp, for it doesn't return what was given. He thinks of Emily's stone face, submerged and growing green, small fish swimming through her outstretched fingers. He wants to join her and sleep forever.

What he gets instead are cold winds of the Void.

"The Duke is dead, all hail The Duke. The real Luca Abele still draws breath, screaming in his locked room, while an Imposter eats on the terrace, the whole of Karnaca before his eyes. None of this would have come to pass if it was not for your mercy, Corvo. Are you happy with your choice? Did your blood not sing with the need to cut throats and pull guts? I recall you loved a bit of butchery in the old days." The Outsider is in a good mood, it seems, smile spasming His mouth between sentences. Corvo watches Him walk around and can't muster it in himself to care.

"Very soon you will meet Delilah again, face to face – at least, your face to one of hers - but will you know which is real? You have a secret in your pocket, but she has many tricks up her sleeve. Who would win?" He brims with an energy that is so unlike Him, it's genuinely off-putting. The Outsider looks like another suitor the Empress has yet to reject, worrying the hem of his jacket with the inevitable on his mind. At least, Emily's admirers had the decency to be real men. The glamour fades a little; He looks just as tired as Corvo feels. The scar is back, halfway.

"No," he says. It’s the most popular word in his vocabulary these days, but this time it feels weightier, final. A 'no' to everything.

The Outsider laughs and it's the strangest sound. Loud, yet joyless.

"I haven't offered, Corvo, you've made your wishes clear. The Attano family remains loyal to the Abbey, aside from a brief lapse of 15 years," He is openly mocking him, like a jilted lover. Corvo cannot pretend to know what is going on behind the scenes and why is his Mark so important, but he doesn’t like anything about it. The Outsider looks somewhere behind his back and smiles again, "wake up, the Royal Protector, your Empress awaits in her prison of stone."

Corvo wakes up to Meagan banging at his door and he can smell Dunwall with his first inhale. It smells like death.

//

Emily is relentless. She jokes she'd gotten plenty of rest when Delilah froze her, "I slept for months, dad, I have letters to write. Many, many letters."

Alexi's funeral accidentally turns out to be a big event, against the explicit wishes of the Empress. Her body was never found – probably burned or destroyed by the witches – so Corvo has nothing to tell her parents. They are burying an empty casket.

He feels like he’s aged thirty years in two hours. Emily gives a beautiful speech and the entirety of surviving Tower staff that managed to escape the slaughter comes to listen. The Guard joins in, along with the nobles who had come in to complain about the destruction of their property. Corvo's looming presence and a torn-out Throne room seem to convince them of the ill timing, so they stay outside to pay respects. Emily's jowls move under her skin, but she doesn't want to sully the funeral for Alexi's parents. She lays the first flower onto fresh dirt and grabs Corvo's left hand with the force that reminds him of someone and with the same desperation.

"So, you don’t have it?" she asks quietly, smiling sadly at people passing by. Corvo squeezes her clammy palm back.

"Delilah took it and I didn't want it anymore," he answers the truth because there is simply no other answer.

Emily thoughtfully hums.

"Why?"

This is so not the place or the time. Corvo was sure she would understand, but maybe her childhood wonder of him Blinking from one corner of the room to the other to cheat at fetch colors her expectations. What can he tell her? "You don't want to be in His debt"? "This gift is a curse"? "Magic is addictive and carnal to the core"? None of these feel like enough.

"Because He is an asshole", he answers instead and Emily huffs into her fist. This one is not enough either, but it's a lie he can live with.

//

Cecilia has moved away four years ago – too many bad memories – and Corvo can't fault her. Seeing Piero's portal on the wall takes him to the past faster than the timepiece inside Stilton’s manor ever did. He can almost taste river water in his mouth, but that just might be the ale.

The new owners of the Pits, twins named Greta and Victoria, never charge Corvo for the drinks, but he always leaves coin anyway.

"Cecelia told us all about your heroics. While this place stands, you will not pay." It's hard to look menacing with a towel over your shoulder, but Greta manages a valiant attempt.

"I don't pay you for the beer," he sighs and Victoria turns her head from the register.

"Our point exactly."

Corvo buys a round for the patrons and slinks up the stairs, accompanied by their raucous cheering.

His room upstairs looks exactly the same, like the girls want to make it a museum of Corvo Attano one day; might bring in more money than the bar at this point. The shrine, however, is new.

Whale oil lanterns have gone out of fashion with the shortage and concerns about overhunting, so he uses regular candles, but the fabric is authentic, Corvo stole it from one of Karnacan ones. 'Export', he thought to himself at the time, bunching the purple banner inside his jacket.

He feels stupid, being here. Does he stand? Does he sit? Kneel? Is there a prayer or a code word? He has pilfered from so many heretics and yet Corvo knows nothing of the etiquette.

"There is no prayer."

Time slows, bits of dust suspended in air. The room loses color, bright hues of the setting sun phasing in and out at minute intervals.

"Good to know."

The Outsider walks in from behind his back and leans on the shrine, studying a hole between the planks of the scrap table, barely covered with the purple.

"Why do you seek me out?" He tries to look nonchalant, but His face is too rigid for anything but a grotesque grimace.

"I want it back." Corvo hesitates for a moment before timidly putting his left hand on the altar, palm down, over the hole. The Outsider looks at it and through it. Nothing in His demeanor shows he has even heard Corvo. "The Mark, I mean, I want it-"

"Why?"

Finally, the Outsider graces him with a look. There is this clinical curiosity to His features, He's trying to solve him again. It reminds Corvo of Jindosh, once again, and the beer in his stomach threatens to escape.

“I miss it.”

He knows, He knows, the bastard knows, but Corvo says it either way. He’s not sure whether the Outsider deserves to hear it, but he sure as Void deserves to say it. It’s penance - misbegotten, stolen, begged for.

“I do not deal in pity, Corvo, so don’t offend me with it.”

“It has nothing to do with pity.” Corvo sighs and turns his back to the shrine, sitting on top of it. He hopes the Outsider doesn’t think it’s sacrilege or anything. “You never told me what happened in Stilton’s manor.”

“Nothing of particular importance.” The Outsider blinks, and Corvo could almost believe Him, if it wasn’t for the memory of the scar, burned into his retinas. He sees this scar in his dreams, weaving in and out from under his feet like a red thread in a gigantic needle. It wraps around him and hangs him over the Void, legs dangling.

“How did she hurt you and who made that cut?” It’s frank and to the point; there is no way Corvo misconstrued what he saw.

The Outsider narrows his eyes. “With Delilah _indisposed_ , her bridges burned down - just like yours, but less dramatic. Having two, she wanted to drain me of the Void, but her spells backfired, so instead of killing me, it just hurt.”

Corvo is afraid to move, mostly because he’s really unsure of how much weight this table he’s on actually holds.

“A long time ago, way before the Empire of the Isles, I was sacrificed to the Void by the way of cutting my neck. It has a sense of humor, it seems, because this is the only scar I can’t remove forever. It always comes back.” He sounds wistful, almost.

Corvo makes a face and crosses his arms; the table creaks dangerously.

“Never liked that place, it’s too cold anyway. Now that I know its shitty jokes, I’m taking my business elsewhere.”

The planks give out and Corvo barely jumps onto his feet before his shrine falls to the floor. The Outsider grins.

“I think it heard you.”

Corvo hurriedly stamps out the candles before the entire thing catches fire. A banner is now stained with beads of drying wax and wood splinters and probably not worth saving. The shrine is gone, but He is not.

“Give me your hand.”

The Outsider feels different in the Void, less stable, less permanent. More malleable. In here, in the dusty attic, so full of bad memories it’s bursting at the seams, His hand is a regular hand - dry, soft, warm. His entire body is surprisingly solid, corporeal. Real.

“I need you to agree.”

“I’m not getting married,” Corvo snorts, but at His pointed look, clears his throat. “Fine, I officially agree to receive the Mark again, being of sound mind and memory. Please,” he adds after a beat.

The Outsider covers his hand with His second one.

“Tell me why.”

It’s the simplest answer in the world.

“I like it.” I like _you_. “I want it.” I want _you_.

The back of Corvo’s left hand burns and he hisses, but the Outsider clamps down onto his palm and doesn’t let go. It hurts, so much more than the first time, even more than when Delilah took it. His eyes water while what feels like every cell in his body lights up with electricity. He buzzes, he vibrates, he sizzles.

The Outsider’s hands are still dry and warm and their feel soothes the frenzy under Corvo’s skin. The Mark is back and the powers with it.

“You’re welcome.”

Carefully inspecting his left, after slipping it out of the Outsider’s grasp, Corvo can’t get his fill in looking. The design is exactly the same, sinking into his flesh seamlessly. He feels giddy, lightheaded, liberated. It’s back and he can’t help himself.

The Outsider’s lips are also dry and warm, jaw soft, probably never having known a razor in his previous life. Corvo’s thumbs trace the faint ridge of the scar under his chin, rougher than he expected. His eyes are closed and He is so very still, and Corvo is just about to tear himself away and escape, when the Outsider grabs the back of his neck.

“You’re great at building bridges.”

Words tickle his lips, and Corvo smiles.

“I always knew I was your favorite.”

“I don’t have favorites.”

//

Corvo leaves before dawn and drops the twins ten coins of gold on the bar for not removing his bed.


End file.
